Travel - Pocketful of Joules

Visiting Virginia: Luray Caverns & Dinosaur Land

A month or so ago Travis surprised me with a trip. Yeah, I know… mind blowing. I’m usually the planner in the family and the one time he DID plan a trip, it was an almost disaster due to the fact that he accidentally signed us up for a timeshare weekend. Oops.

Anyways, we didn’t really plan anything for our wedding anniversary this year since we went on a cruise earlier in the month, so Travis thought it would be fun for us to do a weekend in Virginia to enjoy some foliage and family time.

But, um… less dorky then that sounds.

Or maybe more dorky. This post is basically just an excuse for me to share ridiculous photos of us with dinosaurs. You’ve been warned.

We started the day with a trip down a portion of Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park and it was gorgeous. From there, we went to Luray Caverns. I can’t believe I’ve never been there before! The caverns were discovered in 1878 and are the largest series of caverns in the East. They were absolutely amazing and I totally could not stop taking pictures — definitely the kind of shots that belong in a Mixbook personalized calendar.

I actually had a momentary freak-out when I thought of how far below the ground we were and that I could be stuck in a cave forever. But, I was able to put that out of my mind. Mostly.

After our visit to the caverns, we grabbed a bite for lunch and decided to make a slight detour to Dinosaur Land. Let me start by saying, it was totally ridiculous in a good way. Dinosaur Land is a roadside attraction that has been open for 50 years… and it certainly has seen better days. It was nice outside though, so we decided to walk around and take some silly pictures.

I have no idea why King Kong is at Dinosaur Land…

I totally should have used this one for our family Christmas card…

This one is a really accurate and flattering profile pic for me too:

If you are in the area, it was a great little weekend trip!

If you saw Dinosaur Land on the side of the road, would you stop to take ridiculous pictures?

30 Hours in New York City

A couple weeks ago I was sent on a quick trip to New York City for work. It was a super quick trip actually… just about 30 hours or so. However, in those 30 hours I walked 29,950 steps, shopped, ate, watched an Olympic ice skater perform, marched in the NYC Halloween parade, and also did those two work events that I was there for.

So, I figured I’d share a few of the highlights of my trip!

The best shopping
Obviously if I’m going to go to New York I’m going to run around a do a little shopping while I’m there! I actually did hit up a few thrift stores (which was a total bust), but the real gem was the Winter Village at Bryant Park. My hotel was only a couple blocks away, so I truly stumbled upon the Winter Village having NO idea what was going on. Basically it’s like Etsy exploded all over Bryant Park! The Winter Village Shops opened on October 29^th and are there until January 2^nd. You can check the hours here if you are planning to visit.

I LOVED the shops. Oh my gosh, I spent so much time just wandering from one shop to the next and fondling everything. I ended up buying three things at the shops, but I could have totally bought something for every single person on my holiday list.

I ended up getting a comfy t-shirt from the Strand Book store (it’s New York’s largest family-owned independent bookstore with EIGHTEEN miles of books), a super soft poncho/shawl thingie that I will be showing you later this week, and this handmade necklace from Friction Jewelry:

The charms are a real leaf and baby pine cone dipped in copper and 24k gold. The lacy oak symbolizes strength and the pine cone is for optimism. Friction Jewelry has an online shop with their handmade jewelry and even a whole page of leaf necklaces that you can choose from. Find them here: Friction Jewelry.

The best thing I ate
Not only were the shops at the Winter Village pretty amazing, but there were a bunch of food stands too! Since it was so near my hotel, I pretty much stopped by any time I needed a meal or a snack since there were so many fun options. Out of everything I ate, this was my absolute favorite:

TopArepa offers traditional Arepa, which is a staple food in South America. I had the Artichoke, Parmagian and Garlic on a sweet corn patty, which was sliced in half with melted mozzarella cheese inside. It was SO GOOD that I am considering taking another trip to NYC by the end of the year to get another one! You can find their website here: TopArepa.

The most unexpected but expected moment
Did I mention that I ended up being in New York for Halloween? Yup, I arrived Monday morning and departed on Tuesday, which meant I was in the city for the Village Halloween Parade. My co-worker, Edward, and I joked about jumping into the parade… but I knew that it would probably happen. I mean, why not? We ended up getting down to the parade area pretty late in the evening, but after some running/dodging/and general finagling found ourselves marching along in the parade.

Proof:

All it all, it was a super fun and productive 30 hours! If you get the chance to get to NYC to experience the Bryant Park Winter Village, I totally recommend it. Just make sure you are prepared to buy everything!

Our Halloween Weekend o’ Fun

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you have appropriately gorged yourself on Halloween candy with your morning coffee. Oh wait, just me?

We spent the weekend in Hershey, PA at their annual Hersheypark in the Dark event and had a wonderfully spoooooooky time. This was our first year of a family costume, so I was super excited to get all our costume pieces together for our trip to the park! We also ended up visiting the Turkey Hill Experience in Columbia, PA and eating ALL the ice cream.

First, costumes!

As I teased at the beginning of the month, we decided to go as characters from Wreck-it Ralph. I didn’t go crazy and try to make the costumes identical to the cartoon, but was able to find enough bits and pieces in our own closets to make it work.

For Ralph: We bought Travis a pair of overalls, added in an orange shirt from his closet and I made the “You’re my Hero” medal for him to wear. The wooden heart was less than $1 at Walmart and I had the paint and metallic sharpie with our art stuff at home. I gave a little sneak peek of how I made the medal here and showed the completed version here.

For Vanellope: Apparently Vanellope and I are spirit sisters, because I already had most of the pieces of her outfit. The sweatshirt was from my last Trunk Club order, the blue skirt is one of my favorite running skirts, the leggings were just $5.88 from Walmart and the Doc Martins have been in my wardrobe since I was 17 years old! The only thing I bought to complete the look was the “candy” in my hair that I found on Amazon here.

For Fix-It Felix, Jr: This was another super easy outfit that I was able to find in Jack’s closet. He already had the blue button-up shirt, jeans and yellow hammer, so that worked out well. All I bought for him was a plain blue baseball cap (Walmart again), and a tool belt. I found the tool belt on Amazon for just $9.99 and it included 14 tools/accessories, so it was really worth it.

Okay, back to the fun of Hersheypark! We drove from home on Saturday morning, checked into our hotel, changed into our costumes and went straight to the park. We did our annual measuring of the Jack to see which rides he’d be able to do this year:

We then spent hours running from one ride to the next for the ultimate amount of fun. While in line for the Ferris wheel I snapped this picture of the sunset. So pretty!

On Sunday, we decided to try something new and stop by the Turkey Hill Experience in Columbia, PA. If you are in the area, definitely make it a point to go!

For the three of us to do the Turkey Hill Experience and Taste Lab, it cost less than $40. We spent about an hour walking around the main area, and then we entered the Lab and made our own ice cream.

We were super lucky and they were having a special Trick or Treat event while we were there, so Jack was able to go to about a dozen candy stations. It all ended up with a ‘decorate your own’ pumpkin area (for FREE!) where Jack made a witch pumpkin before we left for the ride home.

All in all, it was an absolute fabulous weekend. I mean, Jack totally had a tantrum/breakdown/head spinning around incident on Sunday morning… but welcome to the life of a preschooler.

How did you spend your Halloween weekend?

Disclaimer: Hershey provided us with tickets to Hersheypark After Dark, however all thoughts, opinions and pictures are all my own. Pocketful of Joules is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.